


Anger

by FeatherQuilt88



Series: The Amber Dragon Anthology [21]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: A Parent's Favoritism and a Parent's Love are Two Very Different Things, Abusive Relationships, Closure, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Iroh is Allowed Some Angst, Let Your Anger Out and Then Let It Go, Moving On, Post-Canon, Trigger Warning: Abusive Parent (Memories Of), Trigger Warning: Mentions of Attempted Child Murder, Trigger Warning: Yelling and Screaming, cutting ties, one-sided conversations, righteous anger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-04
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2021-01-23 00:41:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21311278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatherQuilt88/pseuds/FeatherQuilt88
Summary: Zuko isn't the only one who had a horrible father. But Azulon is dead, and Iroh will have to content himself by having some very harsh words with the old Fire Lord's portrait.
Relationships: Azulon & Iroh (Avatar)
Series: The Amber Dragon Anthology [21]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988473
Comments: 6
Kudos: 71





	Anger

**Author's Note:**

> For readers new to my "Amber Dragon" fanfic series--my fancharacter Kiwa (mentioned briefly) is Zuko and Jin's daughter.

Iroh isn't sure why he finds himself strolling through the palace's Hall of Portraits one day. It's still fairly early in the morning, and he is alone with all the giant tapestries of his forebears, dust motes spreading between them in the sunlight. Most are hung on finely-fashioned golden bars, but three are hung on ugly, twisted bars of iron instead, now.

He stops before this trio, and stares up at the middle one. His amber eyes harden.

"You're lucky we still let you hang there," Iroh mutters gruffly, as if the image of his late father, Fire Lord Azulon, can hear him. _The iron bars had been Zuko's idea. Some of the most passionate progressives of the court had suggested burning the portraits of Sozin, Azulon, and Ozai, but others had pointed out that the Hall of Portraits was also a hall of history. And so, that had been Zuko's compromise with his advisors. To keep the evil trio's tapestries there on the wall, but framed in a shameful way._

"I understand their point," Iroh goes on, almost offhandedly. "To remove the three of you from public sight, whilst every other Fire Lord hangs on... that would almost be like pretending your crimes never existed." His eyes grow angrier, and he whips forward to face Azulon's image fully, a flame suddenly sprouting from his outstretched thumb. "_Ohhhhh, but if they had decided otherwise, Father, I would have happily lit the bonfire myself!_" he growls.

Iroh falls back for a moment, eyes softening again. He gulps as he stares at his flaming digit, as if just then noticing it--stunned by his own vicious anger.

_He is normally the most peaceful and forgiving of men. Iroh scarcely raises his voice to criticize anyone, nowadays, in his humility--the old Firebender knows that, had his heart not turned around, it could have been HIS portrait hanging there, under an iron bar of shame._

_But this isn't about the sins he shares with his father. This is about something far more personal. This is about a sin that would even have made the old General Iroh, merciless besieger of Ba-Sing-Se, blanch with horror._ Iroh's eyes harden once more.

"You were willing to kill a _child,_ Azulon! A _CHILD!!_ DO YOU HEAR ME?!!" he bellows up at his parent's portrait, giving full vent to his anger. "YOUR OWN GRANDSON!! YOU WERE GOING TO HAVE HIM _MURDERED!!_ YOUR _GRANDSON!!!_" Iroh thinks of baby Kiwa, ever so precious to him, and he shudders with horror that he could even be _related_ to this man on the wall.

"You NEVER loved Zuko! Or Lu-Ten! Or Mother! She was terrified of you!!" Iroh's gray whiskers swish back and forth in his tirade. "And you never loved ME! Oh, you were proud of my skills in battle, proud of my status as your firstborn--your so-called 'favorite son!' But you _knew nothing OF me,_ Father! You never shared so much as a laugh or a cup of tea with me--all you saw in me was what I could do for your _legacy!_ And the very _idea,_ of you trying to punish OZAI in the name of MY grief, by TAKING MY REMAINING SUNSHINE AWAY!!" He doesn't know why he is crying now, as well as raging.

"How could you _possibly_ have paid so little attention to both your sons, that you thought losing Zuko would have _hurt Ozai,_ and _pleased ME,_ instead of _breaking my heart clean away?!!!_" Azulon's firstborn child stamps his heavy little feet, dancing in rage. "I WAS BRINGING LU-TEN BACK IN AN URN!!! AND _THIS_ WOULD HAVE BEEN YOUR WELCOME-HOME GIFT TO ME?!! THE ASHES OF ANOTHER LITTLE BOY I LOVED, TO SPRINKLE ON TOP OF THE ONE I HAD ALREADY LOST?!!!" he howls.

"_You_ saw me bouncing my little nephew on my knee! _You_ watched Zuko and Lu-Ten play together at your feet! I WOULDN'T HAVE HAD YOUR LOVE ON A SILVER PLATTER, YOU BABE-MURDERING TYRANT!! What kind of love could you possibly even have _given?!!_ ANSWER me, Father!!!" Iroh truly becomes the Dragon of the West, now, a deep growl coursing through his entire body. A ring of fire erupts around him, as he clenches his hands into fists and _roars._ "_ANSWER ME!!!_"

Azulon's long, painted face never changes. The portrait hangs silent, towering above Iroh. Its eyes stare blankly out into the hall, as cold and impassive in death as they were in life.

The flames fizzle out, and the old Fire prince suddenly falls down on the floor, weeping. He wishes he could have had Zuko's sense of closure--the boy, at least, had gotten to tell his own father what he thought of him, to Ozai's living (and livid) face.

_...Iroh believes in second chances. He always has, ever since Heaven gave that blessed hope and forgiveness to him. He doesn't TRULY hate anyone--for he realizes what every soul can become, if it only turns and surrenders to the light. And so, can he truly say that he HATES his father?_

"...I hate the _memory_ of you," Iroh finally decides, picking absently at a burnt speck of tile. "I hate everything about the man you were in life." He sits with his back to Azulon's tapestry--cross-legged, like the tiny prince he once was, playing beneath his father's throne.

"I would have killed you to protect Zuko, if I had had to," Iroh goes on, almost conversationally. "If your soul, by some miracle, came to loathe all the evil it had done... if, moments before death, you turned around and begged Heaven's forgiveness, just as I did... I would not begrudge you that transformation," the old man closes his eyes peacefully. "But I am glad you are out of our lives."

Iroh stays sitting there, for a long while. He feels his cheeks cool in their dampness. He feels the weight slip out of his chest, as he exhales.

_He does not excuse his father's abominable crimes--to his family and to the world--in the slightest. Nor does he surrender one scrap of his protectiveness for Zuko. But he surrenders Azulon's soul, to be punished--retributively or correctively--by a Power far greater than his own._

_Iroh surrenders his father's soul, because, after all, it was never his to keep._

He gets up, feeling full and refreshed. When he speaks again, his voice is matter-of-fact, rather than malicious.

"When I came to realize how horrible our war was, and ordered the retreat at Ba-Sing-Se, I disowned you for the sake of the world," he lets his father's portrait know, dusting his robe off at the knees. "When Zuko came back to me in the White Lotus camp, and told me what Ozai had told him of your wishes, I disowned you again, for Zuko's sake." He straightens his topknot. "Today, I am disowning you a third time. For my own sake. You are no longer my father." He smiles, feeling a bit of closure after all. "Goodbye, Azulon."

Iroh walks serenely out of the portrait hall, leaving behind a blackened circle of scorch-marks on the floor.


End file.
